OKLAHOMA CITY — A bemused look crossed the face of Deron Williams on Thursday morning when the Nets’ star point guard was asked if he was playing through any kind of injury.

“Yeah, but nothing I’m going to talk about,” Williams said before the Nets faced the Western Conference leading Thunder Thursday night. “I’m out here playing, so that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters.”

Williams certainly was playing, and playing well, in the Nets’ 95-93 win in front of a sellout crowd of 18,203 inside Chesapeake Energy Arena. Going up against a Thunder team missing franchise point guard Russell Westbrook, Williams played like one, finishing with a season-high 29 points on 10-for-17 shooting — including making a season-high six 3-pointers — to go along with three assists and a season-high five steals.

“I think as a team, hopefully we can build on [the win],” Williams said afterwards. “I have to be more aggressive like this every day, and hopefully I can do that.”

Unfortunately for the Nets, though, the kind of performance they got from Williams has been few and far between this season, as a pair of sprained ankles have derailed what had been expected to be a big year for him after all of the moves the Nets made to fashion the roster around him this summer.

If it seems like Williams has been injured since the moment he joined the Nets in February 2011, that’s because he basically has been. Since general manager Billy King traded Derrick Favors, Devin Harris and a pair of first round picks to make Williams the face of the Nets, he’s dealt with first a wrist injury, then issues with both ankles that have plagued him throughout the team’s first two seasons in Brooklyn.

About the only time Williams has seemed truly healthy as a Net was following the All-Star break last year, after he left the team shortly before the break to get platelet-rich plasma treatment on both ankles, missing the final two games before the break to do so.

Upon his return, Williams looked like the player the Nets thought they were getting when they had signed him to a five-year, $100 million max contract the prior summer in order to retain him in free agency and make him the face of the franchise’s move to Brooklyn, averaging 22.9 points and 8.0 assists per game and helping the Nets secure the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

But thanks again to a pair of ankle injuries — a sprain in each ankle that robbed him of his entire training camp then 11 games during the regular season — have left him with pedestrian numbers of 12.5 points and 7.1 assists through 20 games entering Thursday.

For the first time in a long time, though, the Williams who took the floor looked like the player the Nets saw throughout the second half of last year. Playing off the ball after coach Jason Kidd inserted Shaun Livingston into the starting lineup seemed to give Williams a boost of energy, freeing him up to come off of screens and knock down open jumpers.

“It makes us a difficult team to guard,” Joe Johnson, whose game-winner gave the Nets the win, said of Williams playing that way. “It’s hard to guard the pick-and-roll. You can’t trap him on the pick-and-roll because we have other guys who can beat you, and it’s like he had the defense at his mercy tonight.

“He got in the paint when he wanted to, he had the three when he wanted to, and he just made plays.”

Given everything the Nets have gone through this season, it’s the kind of performance they desperately need to get repeatedly from their star point guard moving forward. Perhaps that’s why Kidd highlighted Williams’ health when asked about his star point guard’s lack of production following Wednesday’s practice in San Antonio.

“Just getting healthy,” Kidd said. “For three games there, he was playing a very high level. … We’ve got to get him healthy, but we still all believe that he can get to that level of carrying this team.”

Whether they believe it to be the case or not, the Nets don’t have a choice. The Nets hitched their wagon to Williams three years ago, and now — more than ever — they need him to shoulder the load that comes with being a franchise player.

Thursday night showed he’s capable of doing so. If he can start doing it consistently, there’s still time for the Nets to turn this season around.